on Wed, Aug 08, 2001 at 08:07:34PM +0200, Sebastiaan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > High, > > On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Jonathan Matthews wrote: > > > How would people go about transferring the whole system (dpkg > > details and all) over to another disk (which I'm just about to buy) > > and then removing the faulty one? I've got no problem with putting > > the two disks in concurrently, but I'm not sure how to go about > > moving it all, short of bzipping each partition up. Even then, would > > that actually guarantee a working system? > > > > As an aside, I'd also be interested in any suggestions for drive > > makes/models around the 10+gig mark that are competitively priced. Uk > > specific if poss, Oxford specific even better :-) > > It's to go in a P133, IDE system - nothing fancy here! > > > Get that harddisk as soon as possible. Since you have to turn off the > computer anyway, do it now (and risk that the drive drops dead). If > possible, leave the computer on with minimum harddisk usage and find a > network solution. > > Then: > The safest way to backup an entire system is with dd: > dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/mnt/newhd/sda1.img
I disagree strongly.
Imaging a drive or partition is of little use unless you're planning to
replace your hardware with *identical* media.
A tar archive is far more versatile, allows validation, content listing,
selective restore, can be created from any any Linux filesystem, is
directly accessible through tools such as mc (also gmc and nautilus),
allows writing to different sized partitions, and to different
filesystems (e.g.: archive a ext2, restor to reiserfs).
A dd dump is a binary image dump. It's not particularly useful or
flexible -- well, you can do pretty much anything at a low level, but
the more interesting high-level stuff is more difficult. If your disk
does have damage on it, the dd image has the same problems. An archive
format may offer more recovery potential.
A dd dump *can* be useful in certain instances -- imaging a drive or
partition that's failed for forensic examination. You can also mount an
image as a loopback filesystem, handy in some instances. But if you're
just transferring data, stick to the archival formats: tar, cpio, afio.
Regarding the original poster's questions.
It's getting tough to find drives < 20 GB, friend picked up a slow, 5400
rpm 20G IDE for $85 a month or so back.
For general backup/restore suggestions, see:
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/backups.html
Good luck.
--
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